How to Repair a Mechanical Heart (3 page)

“Nothing,” I mutter.

“
Everything
,” Abel says. “Life. Love. Sex. Rebirth.”

“Ooh. Can I have some?”

“We can all have some, Rebecca.” He raises Plastic Sim’s arm and traces a cross on her forehead with it. “We can
all
have some.”

She snorts. “Did you make special brownies again?”

That Kade guy’s shuffling around upstairs. I hear him at the railing now:
Abe‌…‌seen my shoes?

“Hold please, Bec.” Abel tosses me Plastic Sim. “Brandon can fill you in on his renaissance while I dress my boy.”

He bounds upstairs, humming the
Castaway Planet
theme. Bec’s smile snaps off. She sticks her hands on her hips and looks me up and down.

“What’s wrong?” she says.

“What? Nothing.”

“Bullshit. You ironed your t-shirt.”

“I did not.”

“Your shorts look ironed too.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Are you pussing out on this trip?”

“How mad would you be?”

“Um, furious?” She grabs the front of my shirt. “I
cannot
be in my house this month, Brandon.”

“Why not?”

“My mother and sister are hosting a book club. Eight choir ladies plus wine spritzers plus a stack of Amish romance novels.”

“Ugh.”

“What’s the problem?”

I slide her the tickets to the Castaway Ball and fill her in, the whole terrifying find-me-a-guy plan. Between the lines, I appeal to her time-honored status as my best friend. The one who knew I was gay a year before Nat talked me into coming out, the one who buoyed me up with sensitive grace and good humor through the parent talk and the Father Mike meeting and the dark nights of the soul when I lay awake at 1 a.m. pondering the existence of God and praying for a sign that he was real and sympathetic and still pretty much okay with me.

She cracks up laughing.

“You have to help!” I smack her arm.

“How?”

“Tell him I won’t be over Zander for another year. At least.”

“Oh, Fake Zander? I don’t‌—‌”

“Shhh!”

“Whatever.” She grabs a pear from the fruit bowl and takes a big messy bite. “You can’t stay fucked up forever, can you? You need to start putting yourself out there and getting humiliated like the rest of us. Only then will you be a Real Boy.”

I glower at her. “What kind of friend are you?”

“A heartless one.” She drops a sticky kiss on my cheek. “I love you, though.”

“Aww! Ken and Skipper.”

Abel’s grinning in the doorway. Two tanned hands knead his shoulders and he pulls in Greenshorts, who isn’t Greenshorts anymore because he’s got on frayed army pants and a white V-neck that’s a little damp and clingy. His light brown eyes and skin are fanfic-flawless and he’s all lean muscle. I imagine a conversation with him, a one-sided ode to 12-minute workouts and wheatgrass shakes.

“So Kade, this is Bec, our lovely and amazing cameraperson‌—‌she’s only a moderate
Castaway Planet
fangirl but she’s putting up with us anyway. And, uh, you’ve seen Brandon online.”

“Uh-huh.” Kade squints at me, stifling a yawn. “You hook up with this one?”

“Noooo. No no no. Tell him, Brandon.”

“Not my type,” I say.

“Obsessed with his ex,” Abel whispers to Kade.

“Right, right,” Kade grins. “You don’t do guys with baggage.”

“I merely assist them. He’s my summer project.”

Kade looks me over again and elbows Abel. “Babe,” he stage-whispers.

“Hm.”

“He looks like that dude from the movie.”

“Which one?”

“The one we watched at the party. That hit man with amnesia‌—‌”

“The main guy?”

“No no no‌…‌the
little
dude.” He drops his voice low. “With the‌…‌ears?”

“Oh my God,” Abel snorts, raining cute smacks on his shoulder. “Brandon, don’t listen. He’s
awful
!”

My ears burn like Kade’s thrown a hot spotlight on them, but he’s already jumped to the next thing: kissing Abel in a place I never thought about, the spot where the strong line of his jaw curves up to meet his earlobe. Abel kisses him back like no one else is in the room. When Kade turns his back, his thin t-shirt gives me glimpses of more tattoos I suspect are inversely proportional to intelligence, including a chicken with wings of fire and NO REGRETS spelled out in barbed wire. Bec traps me in this tractor beam of pity that’s deeply unnecessary since I couldn’t care less who Abel’s playing Perfect Boyfriends with, so I cross my eyes at her and grab the laptop again.

Abel’s got the Cadsim fanjournal bookmarked. I hop on to see if Miss Maxima and the rest of them are smacktalking us yet. Abel loves it when they do; he thinks it makes us famous. I still remember when Jimmy Gilver called me a dillhole in third grade, so I’m pretty weirded out when I read:

cavegrrl94: 
 DEATH TO BRANDON & ABEL!!!

murklurk: 
 They will lose this bet. SO HARD.

mrs.j.cadmus: 
 B & A are pathetic, srsly. love is alien to them.

murklurk: 
 Yeah, really. Even Sim knows more about it than they do.

Miss Maxima: 
 Don’t worry, girls. Pride goeth before a fall. In six short weeks their smug jaded mugs will be onscreen, acting out one of our very best Cadsim fics in exquisite detail. I can’t wait to see their stupid lips moving closer‌…‌closer‌…‌
closer
‌…‌

“I want a picture!” says Bec.

I fold down the screen. For a second I think she wants to snap one of Abel and his guy the way you’d photograph a pair of zoo otters who won’t stop doing adorable things, but then she tosses her camera to Kade and they’re pulling me in front of the huge silver fridge, nudging me between Bec and Abel. Kade directs us: action figures in fists, arms around each other. Abel makes big jokey kissy lips next to my face. I stiffen and curse the brain defect that made me say
yes
when he tempted me with those CastieCon tickets his parents bought and begged me to sign up for six weeks of his company. Personal space invasion. Toast crumbs in the butter. Nonstop matchmaking. Maybe I can ditch him at a rest stop, run off to some mountain village where the yurts are far apart and everyone stays inside whittling and no one cares if you just want to be alone.

Good idea, bud,
says Father Mike.
You can still stop this.

The camera stops flashing. I shut my eyes. White halos dance in the dark. Abel hooks Plastic Cadmus to the rim of my ear and leans close, whispering in his best space-captain rasp.

“Let’s get started, Tin Man,” he says. “I can’t
wait
to see how you drive that thing.”

CastieCon #1
Cleveland, Ohio

Chapter Three

“This RV,” Abel declares, “is like, nine months pregnant with
awesome
.”

I’m up in the cab of the Sunseeker, zoning out to Kings of Convenience and powering the RV down the last strip of highway before Cleveland. Behind me, Abel and Bec are recording our first on-the-road entry. I hope they leave me out of it. I spent three hours in a Pennsylvania truck stop today while Abel tried on stupid hats and fed five hundred quarters into a gumball machine to get a gold plastic medallion with a dollar sign on it, and now I just want to space. I’m Sim in the cockpit of the U.S.S. Starsetter, my default setting switched to NAVIGATE and the sensors in my collarbone blinking red, scanning the skies for hidden dangers.

“Check it out, Casties. There’s a rug shaped like a pinecone and a duck lamp that quacks and I don’t know what’s in these rustic moose-head pillows but they’re really super-comfortable‌…‌Hey, Bran!”

I knock my head against the backrest. “What?”

“Whatcha thinking about up there?”

“Eternal damnation.”

“Hot.” He’s in my face with Bec’s camera now, his white hair teased up and experimented on. He looks like Edward Scissorhands rolled in flour. “You’re so Cadmus when you drive an RV. Look guys, he’s got that nonchalant ‘I-only-need-one-hand-on-the-wheel’ thing‌—‌

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s true! All you need are six inches and a bomber jacket. Ooh, ooh, do the Cadmus line from the pilot, okay? C’mon, I’ll set you up.” He stiffens his back like Sim and puts on some phony robot voice.
“Captain, we appear to be veering off course. My navigation sensors indicate
‌—‌that’s you, Bran. Say it!”

“Screw your sensors!” I roll my eyes.

“Mm. You’re not
quite
projecting ‘sexy desperation,’ but we’ll work on it. Hey, tell our fifteen fans where we’re headed.”

“The Robot’s Bookshelf.”

“Guys, we are
seconds
away from our pre-convention appearance at this sci-fi bookstore where they’re having an essential CastieCon geek gathering and Brandon’s going to talk to a B-O-Y, and‌—‌”

“What?”

“That’s your assignment tonight. You converse in public with a boy. You’ve heard of them, right? They’re like girls, but with penises?”

Father Mike’s going to pepper my subconscious with Leviticus 18 in another second. I turn up the music and Sim myself steady. “Boys do not interest me, Captain.”

“Right. Here, this could be you, are you ready?” He fumbles with his phone and reads off the screen. “
Sim felt his steely resolve slowly melt away. He could taste the hot manly tang of the captain’s lips‌—‌”

“Will you quit it?”

“Running his nimble silver tongue over his perfect teeth, he‌—‌
Hey!”

I snap his camera shut. Abel blips the Cadsim fic off his phone’s little screen and thunks his boots up on my dashboard, grinning. His cheek is smudged with powdered sugar and Plastic Cadmus chins the rim of his jeans pocket, as if there are crumbs and sticky change in there and he’s desperate to escape.

“Donut hole?” We stop at a red light. He wags the bag from the Donut Hut in Clarion. “You know you want one.”

“No thanks.” I smell cinnamon. My mouth waters. “Why do you have to read that fic out loud?”

“Um, because it’s hilarious?”

“Huh-uh. There’s some deeper neurosis here.”

“I love it, actually. It speaks to me.”

“I knew it.”

“Well, who
doesn’t
love a good mpreg?”

“A what?”

“Sim gets man-pregnant? Gives birth to twins during a tornado?”

“I’ll pretend I never heard that.”

“Here, I’ll read you the wedding one‌—‌”

“NO.”

“But Xaarg’s the minister!”

“I will end you.”

“Where’s your sense of humor?”

“Zander took it.”

He chugs some root beer and summons a massive belch. “You know what?” A smaller belch follows. “You could learn a lot from this android-learns-to-love fic.”

“I’ve already loved. He dumped me for a‌—‌”

“‌—‌bartender, and he was pre-med, and he read
Ulysses
for fun and caught salmon with his bare hands and played basketball with albino orphans‌—‌”

“You’re just jealous ‘cause your boyfriend works at Sub Shack.”

“He’s a
sandwich technician
. And at least he’s present tense.”

“Whatever.” I craft an expert left-hand turn. “I’m not talking to a guy tonight.”

“Why?”

“I just‌…‌need more time.”

“Brandon. This is dire. Don’t hold out for Mr. Candlelight Romance.” His cheeks bulge with donut. “You wait too long and soon you’ll be seventy-five and you’ll live all alone in a sad fourth-floor walkup that reeks of loneliness and takeout chow mein, and then you’ll wish you listened to me.”

“What’s wrong with chow mein?”

He lobs a donut hole at me.

“I mean, I’d rather have moo shu pork, but‌—‌”

“Can I punch you? Like for real?”

Dad’s GPS breaks in:
Arrive at destination
. I wave Abel quiet and bump up into the bookstore parking lot, looking for a spot I can ease the Sunseeker into without breaking a sweat. I’ve got this swervy carsick feeling. It’s the Zander talk. Can Abel tell it’s a lie? He’s too smart to be fooled forever.

“Whoa‌…‌” Abel says.

My knuckles go white on the wheel. “What?”

“A-plus park job.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“You did that one-handed.”

“I did.”

He toys with Plastic Cadmus. “I’ve been like, covertly admiring you all day. I’d crap my pants if I had to drive one of these.”

I sneak a glance at him. It doesn’t compute, Abel scared of a thing that’s like walking for me. RV driving’s just geometry and physics; it’s Dad in the seat beside me with his tall can of BBQ chips, guiding me through highway merges and practice park jobs in empty lots. You get into a rhythm on a long straight road, and after a while you forget you’re hauling something huge and scary behind you.

“It’s easy,” I shrug.

“Really?”

“Well, I’m kind of amazing.”

“Confidence. Excellent.” He stands up and stretches like a cat. “Just what you need tonight.”

“Okay, but I swear I’m not‌—‌”

He kicks the Sunseeker door open, like in the pilot episode where Cadmus breaks into StarPort 38’s android-storage locker and steals Sim from his charging dock. He turns to me, holds out his hand with a grave stage-glare. Bec watches, grinning, shrugging on my Phillies sweatshirt. Abel’s got on a candy-striped polo shirt and his new truck-stop hat with Punxsutawney Phil on it, and right above the fly of his dark designer jeans is a big ironic belt buckle that shouts PRAISE THE LORD.

“C’mon, shake your circuits, android,”
Abel quotes.
“Your freedom is waiting.”

***

To enter The Robot’s Bookshelf, the three of us duck under a droopy
Welcome CastieCon Attendees!
banner and squeeze through an archway wound with silver garland and blue plastic lights shaped like spaceships and stars. The owners are huge
Castaway Planet
geeks, you can tell. Dr. Zara Lagarde’s favorite album is playing (Janis Joplin,
Pearl
), they’ve got the snack bar stocked with Cadmus’s favorite jellybeans (cinnamon), and the backdrop to the small stage is this giant blown-up photo of sunflowers, like the ones in Cadmus’s visions of his Earth childhood.